


Matrimony, Mixed With Espionage

by Colourofsaying



Category: Niels & Gang (Webcomic)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Marriage, Multi, Same-Sex Marriage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-22
Updated: 2011-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-27 21:01:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/300007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Colourofsaying/pseuds/Colourofsaying
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The museum was a tall old building, white limestone, carved pillars, and archways that were clear excuses for stonecarvers to exorcise their frustrated whimsy. Large yellow banners draped across the inside of the too-clean windows, reading International Spy Museum in big red block letters. There was a restaurant next door. Its windows were even longer and shinier, and the furnishings I could see through the glass said the food would be cool on the plate, dull on the tongue, and hard on the pocket. I went up the steps and paused for a moment. It occurred to me that I didn’t know if a man needed to knock on the door of a public building after hours if he was showing up for his own wedding.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Matrimony, Mixed With Espionage

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kumarei](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kumarei/gifts).



            “It’s you,” she said. Her eyes were narrow. I hadn’t noticed the first time I met her. Now I couldn’t look away. They narrowed further when they saw me, like a snake bunching up to strike, and her head tilted back up against the door over the over-generous swell of bosom she’d spent some time tucking into a too-tight blue camisole. It had a sort of small white flower on it I imagined had taken the designer some dreams or some drugs to come up with. The bottom half of her was wearing black slacks, nicely contrasting with the peeling white paint rubbing off on them from the wood she was leaning against. I didn’t say anything. Her clothes weren’t any of my business, as it happened.

            “Indeed,” I said. She was standing in the door, propped up on the jam, one foot tucked over the other. Bare toes, the nails painted dark red. She tilted her chin up and looked at me, crossing her arms across the distorted blossoms. I thought about it for a moment. I could tip her in. Step over her. It wouldn’t win me any favors. “May I come in?”

            She glared at me. I glared back. We stood that way for a while. We weren’t getting anywhere fast, so I backed up a step or two and made a jump for the porch roof. The edge of the gutter bit into my hands like a knife. I swung myself up, trying not to bleed on my new Hermes suit. The harsh grit of the shingles grated my knees through my trousers. I straightened, brushing at them. There wasn’t much to see up here. Rough pavement down below. Dingy, once-colourful houses. Too many trees for comfort.

            A fast shadow caught my eye, and I ducked. Just in time. A draft stirred my hair and on the street below, something shattered. I didn’t see him, but I knew he was there. Well, he had to be, unless he was even more of a paranoid bastard than I gave him credit for.

            “We have doors for a reason, asshole!” the girl shouted. Right. I looked over the edge of the roof. No girl. She hadn’t moved from the lintel.

            “Sorry, Britney,” I told her, raising an eyebrow. She couldn’t see it, but that didn’t matter. I hadn’t asked her to come back. It’s possible I may have objected to it, and that hypothetical objection may have been counterproductive. “I really am going to see your father, whether you like it or not.”

            “Oh, fuck off!” she said. Across the street, an old woman flipped her the bird. I turned back to the house.

            The roof was steep and slick. Not a problem for someone with much practice in casual housebreaking. Tripwires and broken glass littered the surface. I figured there were pressure pads under the shingles. But 250 had to have a way to get in. It had to be simple. I eyed the roof. Black shingles, tripwires, broken glass. Nothing to see.

            There was no other option. I reached into my jacket and took out a slim black canister. It looked like a flashlight, one of those sleek little numbers. It wasn’t. I aimed the bulb at the house across the street, a couple of meters above my head. Checked the height with the laser guide. Pressed the button. A thin cord sped out and fastened to the other house with a sound no louder than a cat jumping off a wall. I turned around and aimed the other end for right above his window. The rope latched on. I pressed another button and it grew taut.

            “Are you still up there?” the girl called. She’d backed out into the street. I ignored her. Undoing my belt buckle, I pulled it loose and looped it over the wire. Then I looked at the window. Plain wooden frame. Innocent-looking glass panes. It had to be locked. I fished my lockpicks out of my shoe and put them between my teeth. Then I grabbed the belt, opened it, and flipped upside down so I was hanging by my knees with my back to the window. “Oh my god. Dad’s going to kill me.”

            Once my feet left the roof there was nothing to keep me from sliding towards the window, so I did. It came up fast. I barely had time to brace a foot before it slammed into the wall. My head cracked into the glass. Bulletproof. It didn’t even crack, much less shatter. I pulled my lockpicks out from between my teeth and got to work.

            It didn’t take me long to get the lock open. Even upside down trying to pick a lock behind my head with blood running down my fingers I’m an expert. At least this time I didn’t have to worry about getting DNA off the window sill, which was white and ordinary and currently looked like the scene of a crime. I put the picks back between my teeth and shoved the window up.

            Hands grabbed my shoulders.

            “As much as I’m enjoying the view, 300,” 250 said, pulling me through, “why didn’t you use the door?”

            “The biter,” I said. “Why’s she here again?”

            “Because she’s my daughter and I love her more than anything else in the world.” He dropped me. I might have deserved it. Maybe. Probably not.

            In any case, I wasn’t complaining. I’d landed on the bathroom tile, and from where I was lying, there was nothing but a long, long stretch of skin.

            “You’re bleeding.” He bent down and picked up one of my hands. “Is this from the gutter?”

            “You should probably change the locks on your windows,” I told him. “The gutter’s good, but the window’s a weak point.”

            “Most people give up,” he said, pulling at my wrist. “And if they don’t, I’ve got a Glock in the first aid cabinet. And above the shower head. Let me fix up your hands.”

            “Let me blow you,” I countered.

            He blinked. I could see he was tempted. Who wouldn’t be?

            “Let’s make a rule,” he said, tugging at my shoulders. “No sex while bleeding.”

            I followed him up, and sat down on the toilet seat when he pushed at my arm.

            “That’s not what you said last week in that alley after the thing in the warehouse with the explosion.” I held out my hands and he held them under the faucet, rinsing them clean. It stung, but I could take it.

            “There’s a difference between adrenaline sex and at-home sex!” 250 turned around to fetch the bandages out of the cupboard on the opposite wall. I couldn’t complain about the view. “I’m not going to – not while you’re bleeding, 300.”

            “There’s not _that_ much difference,” I said. He came back around and wrapped my hands in bandages. I flexed them. Still reasonably dexterous. “Remember two months ago, with the knives? I don’t recall anyone objecting _then_.”

            He tilted my chin up, and I looked him in the eye and smiled. He shook his head.

            “I have no idea what to do with you sometimes,” he said.

            “Marry me?” I offered.

 

            We’d been engaged for six months. I’d been living with him for eighteen. Which is to say that I was not so happy to be living in my own apartment again. It was a nice apartment. Almost the top of the building, with roof access – necessary in my line of work – an elevator renowned for its uninterrupted function, long glass windows, hardwood floors. The kitchen, I’d been told, was very nice as well. It contained an orange, sitting lonely on a long dark countertop. I didn’t know where the orange had come from, but it was there when I arrived the week before, escaping the biter, and it was there when I walked back in again that morning.

            I said hello as I walked past. It seemed appropriate. The orange had probably spent more time there than I had.

           “Do you always greet your fruit?” inquired the blond man lounging on my bed. Niels. Crime lord, serial killer, incorrigible flirt. Deceiving him had been a faint hope at best.

            “I suppose you’ve come to help me prepare for the wedding,” I said. If I told Niels to get out, I’d be knocked unconscious, tied to a chair, and stripped naked, and when I came to, he’d still be there. Or he’d not take no for an answer, I would shoot him, and everyone would end up in the hospital. Direct opposition had never worked well for us in the past. “Did you steal Thomas’ invitation?”

            “Of course,” he said, affable as always. “I was so hurt when I realized you sent me false information. Scotland, Agent 300? In February? Hardly believable.”

            “There is no country more beautiful than Scotland, regardless of the season.” I walked over to the closet and took out my wedding clothes.“If you’ll excuse me, I need to get dressed.”

            “No excuses necessary, handsome.” He propped himself up on his elbows. “Oh, very nice. Going traditional… all the way?”

            “That, Niels, is need-to-know only,” I said, and walked into the bathroom. The door was reinforced steel with four security-grade locks and protected hinges. The walls were oak with a lead core, and where the window used to be, I’d placed a charming sun lamp with green silk tassels. It wasn’t built to withstand a nuclear attack, although it probably could. I’d simply gotten tired of having my bath interrupted by spies, thugs, superiors, and crime lords. Particularly crime lords.

            I thought it would probably hold up long enough for me to get dressed, if nothing else.

            The complexity of the suit made the suit I was wearing look as simple as pajamas. I spread it like a landscape on the vintage carved cherry suit rack under the lamp and stared at it for a moment. Crisp white dress shirt, kilt, waistcoat, tartan hose, silk flashes, dress brogues, dress sporran, cuff links, burgundy silk bowtie, Sgian dubh, and a black barathea regulation doublet. The kilt belonged to the 79th Regiment.

            “Are you prepared for this?” I asked myself in the mirror. It was an ornate mirror, gold-framed, with more curlicues than an ingénue’s ‘do. The face in the mirror was strained around the edges. It nodded, but I didn’t believe it, and it didn’t look like it did either. I gave it one more look and set to the task at hand.

            Half an hour later, I opened the door. Niels was sprawled comfortably in front of it, eyes turned up, bright and interested, as if the ceiling had the sort of fresco usually found in a house of ladies of negotiable virtue sprawled across it. Despite the recent chill in my relationship with the apartment, I figured it hadn’t yet gone sour enough to mysteriously acquire dirty artwork in my absence, so I stayed well back from the door and kept my eyes firmly fixed on the frame of the slender man on the floor.

            “Nice try,” I said, and kicked at his head. He rolled back out of reach and climbed to his feet, all smug smile and felinity.

            “It seemed worth the effort,” he agreed, hands going through the motions of dusting off his clothes. “Foolish of me to forget that the door opened inwards.”

            “I’m surprised, I must admit.” I walked over to the dresser, reached out to pick up my boutonniere, and paused. “You haven’t tampered with this, have you?”

            “On your wedding day?” he replied. It wasn’t an answer. I peered at it more closely. It seemed okay. I opened the dresser drawer and took out a small pair of tongs.

            “Oh, my,” he murmured, coming up behind me. I tensed. I didn’t like him there. “What are _those_ for?”

            “You don’t know?” I said, picking up the flowers and giving them a good shake. Nothing fell out but a few small white petals. Nothing was in the ribbon, either, or nestled in the stems. I couldn’t see any powders, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there. I turned around. “Clearly certain reports were… exaggerated. I feel betrayed. Smell this.”

            “Lovely,” he said, breathing in ostentatiously. “Scented flowers at weddings are rare and beautiful things.”

            Satisfied, I tucked the flowers in place and put my hands on his shoulders. He looked at me warily. I beamed at him, and under my hands his shoulders tensed.

            “Thank you for the help,” I told him, sugar loaded so high the words almost buckled under the strain. His eyes widened. I landed a smacker on his cheek.

            He still hadn’t gotten himself together when I walked out the door, whistling the wedding march cheerfully to myself. Point to me.

 

            The museum was a tall old building, white limestone, carved pillars, and archways that were clear excuses for stone carvers to exorcise their frustrated whimsy. Large yellow banners draped across the inside of the too-clean windows, reading _International Spy Museum_ in big red block letters. There was a restaurant next door. Its windows were even longer and shinier, and the furnishings I could see through the glass said the food would be cool on the plate, dull on the tongue, and hard on the pocket. I went up the steps and paused for a moment. It occurred to me that I didn’t know if a man needed to knock on the door of a public building after hours if he was showing up for his own wedding.

            The doors swung open. Inside, a tall woman with a cool still face stood, hands clasped behind her back. She was wearing a crisp burgundy number that clung to her curves and cut off sharp and hard like a ‘50s fashion plate. The angle of her hat was sharp enough to cut familiarity into tiny bleeding scraps. She was a graying blonde Carmen Sandiego with calculating eyes, and I figured she only had three guns on her at the moment, but I could be wrong.

            “Good evening, Boss,” I said. She stepped back into the museum. I followed her inside.

            “You’re late, 300,” she said. I didn’t think I was. I looked at my watch. One minute. I supposed that that probably was late to a woman like her. A woman for whom death rode on the ticking of the second hand. Unpunctuality has, no doubt, ruined many an assassination. “A result of your stunt at 250’s house this afternoon. We do try to maintain _something_ of a low profile, Agent 300.”

            “Yes, ma’am,” I agreed. I followed her through the gray-carpeted lobby, past the red ropes marking off the line for the fake ID machines, and into the depths of the building.

            We stopped in the Bond room. It was crammed full of knick-knacks and photographs, carefully arranged as only museums can arrange things to look like it was not actually the prized collection of an exuberant too-rich fan. There was only one thing worth looking at, and she sat gleaming seductively in the corner of the room, carefully roped off and placarded. The Bond car, in all her glory, dangerous and fast and loaded with more gadgets than even a man engaged in the flashiest form of espionage could find a use for, designed and installed by a mad engineer with too much time on his hands.

            A light cough interrupted our communion.

            “You are here to marry a man, not a car, 300,” Boss said with asperity. “Please stand by the vehicle, and do not touch it. I will know if you have done so.”

            She turned and swept out of the room, high heels clicking along the hall careless and languorous in the way of certain heels that can move fast and silent and aren’t. I moved to stand in front of the Aston-Martin, carefully avoiding the alluring gleam of her sides with my eyes, and faced the doorway. There was a faint rich smell in the room, something floral, spicy, and completely foreign to a public building. I couldn’t quite place it.

            The moon could’ve been hung in the sky and given a good polish, with plenty of time for the workmen to wipe their hands off on their overalls, lean up against the wall, and catch up over a flask of whiskey, while she was out of the room. By the time I heard her heels clicking back down the hall, accompanied by a man’s heavier tread and the peculiarly erratic taps of Britney’s boots, my hands were locked behind my back to keep them from trembling, or from running themselves all along the car’s smooth curves. My breath was coming short and hard. I’d been studying the carpet. It hadn’t told me anything other than that the museum was charmingly concerned for the efforts of its cleaning staff, and had on this ground provided a carpet so durable and hard that a nuclear explosion would leave nothing but a few fragments of ash, easy to sweep off the next day and no harm done.

            The lights flicked on. I looked up, and there he was. For a minute, I even forgot about the car.

            Thomas had done an excellent job getting him ready, I had to admit, and that was no easy task. Thinking about that, I felt myself combating an irrational urge to punch Thomas in the face for touching him in that suit. It was as perfect on him as I’d imagined when I’d given the specifications to the tailor. Long slim trousers, black as sin and twice as tempting. I couldn’t see the back view from there, but if the front was anything to go by, spectacular would be an understatement. The jacket fit just right on his shoulders, broad and muscular, and what the waistcoat did to his front made lust need to go have a cool drink and a bit of a lie-down.

            His tie, of course, was askew. My fingers itched to go straighten it, but that wasn’t all they itched to do. I kept them firmly locked behind my back to keep them from hitting the tie and sliding right on down through all those buttons till they caught skin and kept it.

            Boss caught my eye and glared at me before turning to him and tugging the tie straight.

            “I really don’t know quite how you manage it, 250,” she said. “It’s as if you have some preternatural ability to disrupt clothing.”

            “Sorry, ma’am,” he said, and smiled at me. I could feel the heat rising off my skin. In my mind, it looked like a shimmering heat cloud, red and wavery.

            “Go stand next to your fiancé,” she said, and turned back into the hallway as he walked across the room to me. Apparently there was someone else out there, but I couldn’t tell who it was. I wasn’t looking, anyway.

            “Hey,” he said. I looked straight at him, followed the lines of his face and the marks of his scars, and brought my eyes up to meet his. I saw a man torn between generating his own localized heat wave and passing out.

            “Hey,” I said back, grinning. Two secret agents getting married in the Bond room of the International Spy Museum. Me. Marrying a man. Absurd, impossible, marvelous, insane. I held out a hand, and he took it. “Niels showed up at the apartment.”

            “Did he?” I am not always a nice person. I liked seeing him get all cold and dangerous. I liked the thought of Niels suffering more than I should.

            “Oh, yes,” I told him, and ran my thumb lightly over his hand, just to see him shiver. “He tried to get a look up my kilt. I thwarted him, of course.”

            “Of course,” he said. I thought he wasn’t convinced, and couldn’t say it was terribly convincing. Niels and I had a history, largely consisting of the theft of clothing, banter on rooftops, and casual bondage. The number of suits in Niels’ closet that used to be mine greatly exceeded the number of his in mine, though.

            “Nonsense,” I said, using my free hand to trace his jaw. “It’s good I was able to foil his evil plot, though. I wouldn’t want him to get an eyeful.”

            I watched the heat shimmer with a good deal of satisfaction. He’d had more practice with weddings than I had – one to none. No doubt that was the reason for the trepidation. Being as I was not a woman, it seemed unnecessary.

            “Are you gentlemen ready?”  The man doing the asking had a solid, dependable sort of voice and a solid, dependable sort of suit. He looked like a judge, and probably was one. In his right hand, he carried a burgundy portfolio, and in his left, a copy of our ceremony.

            “Yes,” 250 said. He rocked back on his heels. Forward. Back.

            “Completely,” I said. The judge looked at us. His mouth twitched, a quirky little spasm that set the wrinkles on his face to waltzing.

            “Dearly Beloved, we are gathered here today as witnesses to the joining of,” he looked down at his paper. Frowned. We were standing in the spy museum, and the names on the sheet were about as legally binding as duct tape and cement galoshes. “Agents 250 and 300 in holy matrimony, which is not to be entered into unadvisedly or lightly, but reverently, discreetly, advisedly, and solemnly, with due consideration of the attendant risks any union between two secret agents entails. Into this estate these two persons present now come to be joined. If any person can show just cause why they may not be joined together, excluding Britney, let them speak now or forever hold their peace.”

            He paused, clearing his throat, and shuffled the notes in his hand until he found the one he was looking for. It was a long shuffle. He squinted at the type, a man who needed glasses and never wore them out of vanity.

           “Marriage is a partnership. Partners guide, protect, and shape each other. While it precludes other ties, it does not exclude them; the people, principles, and things that are important to one partner must be respected and protected by the other, whether or not they are shared. Because it is a partnership, it is a relationship of equals. Neither partner is superior or inferior to the other. Marriage is intellectual as well as emotional and physical. Without the trust and understanding established by communication and respect, it cannot succeed. You have come here today to be married to each other. With full understanding of the responsibilities of marriage, will you, Agent 250, take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband?”

           “I will.”

           “Will you, Agent 300, take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband?”

           “I will.”

           Boss stepped forward, taking the place of the man in the dependable suit. The hard museum lights sharpened the shadows under her hat. I couldn’t see her eyes. For the first time, I noticed the vases of dark red roses filling the room. Suddenly the elusive scent made sense.

           “I’ve known you since you were both in training, and presumably because of the longevity of our relationship, you asked me to be a witness and speaker at your marriage. It’s rare that a romance between agents survives, and even rarer that I approve of one. You are, as always, an exception. Wilde says that ‘a _grande passion_ is the privilege of those who have nothing to do.’ As I intend to keep you both very busy for the foreseeable future, it is to be hoped that the epigram will hold true, and you will not be inflicted with passion but granted contentment.” She nodded at us both and gestured to Britney. She stepped forward, holding our rings cupped in the palm of her hand.

            “Saying that I didn’t approve of you at first is an understatement. I knew you as a womanizer, a drunk, and a loudmouth. You were the last thing I wanted for my father. But you shot the man who hurt him, and you stayed with him when he was injured, and even though you were terrified, you let yourself fall in love. Since you’ve been together, I’ve seen my father happier than he ever was with Mom, so I’m okay with this. You’re responsible for each other now, and these rings symbolize that responsibility.”

            He took my hand in his, and she handed him the ring. It was solid titanium, gunmetal black, unadorned except for an almost invisible catch on the inner rim. The inside was hollow. It held jut enough cyanide to make death quick and relatively painless.

            “I, Agent 250, take you, Agent 300, to be my partner, my lover, and the keeper of my secrets. I will be yours in times of plenty and in times of want, in times of sickness or injury and in times of health, in times of joy and in times of sorrow, in times of failure and in times of triumph. I promise to respect you, to give you an alibi and drive the getaway car, to care for and protect you as much as I can in our line of work, to comfort and encourage you, and to stop you if necessary, as long as we both shall live.”

            He slipped the ring on my finger as he finished. I stared at it. Astonishing. Impossible. When I looked up, he was still eyeing the ring, and I couldn’t tell if the thought made him happy or not. The words blocked up in my throat. Britney glared at me. It didn’t help. Finally he met my eyes. He had that little smile. Saying my lines was easier than breathing.

            Britney handed me his ring and I put it on his hand, but I didn’t let it go. Couldn’t stop watching our hands. Eventually the judge got impatient and slammed the portfolio down on a little table, a nice walnut number. No alarms went off. Either Boss had fixed the system or the table wasn’t part of the display.

            “Sign here,” he said, pointing at the appropriate lines. I picked up the pen, signed my number, and handed it off to 250. We looked at the judge for some final words. He didn’t disappoint.

            “You’re married now. God help us all,” the judge said, and walked out.

            “You may now kiss the bride,” Boss said, and turned on her heel. Britney must have followed, because when we stopped kissing, there was no one in sight.

 

            When we climbed out of the taxi, a shower of vibrantly red rose petals drifted down around us. I felt them land on my hair, soft as drifting ash, and watched them billow down from the trees beside the road. They clung to his shoulders, scarlet on black. He smiled at me, that little soft smile he thought I didn’t notice, the one he gave me every time I straightened his clothes and stood too close.

            “Did you arrange for a reception?” I asked. He grimaced. I missed the smile.

            “Irene insisted. It was either a public wedding and no reception or a private wedding and a reception.” He took my hand and turned it over, tracing the lines. I shuddered and flipped the hand over, holding his.

            “It’s just as well,” I told him. “They’ll be much less likely to interrupt next week if we give them the opportunity to make embarrassing toasts now.”

            “Should be small and quiet, anyway. Irene, Britney, Thomas, Wendy, Boss, a couple of our colleagues.” He sighed, and cut his eyes down over my clothes. I smirked. I knew he liked the outfit. I was a proud Scotsman, sure, but I wasn’t born yesterday. I figured people would clear out soon enough.

            “One can hope,” I said, and as soon as I said it I knew I shouldn’t have. I looked back over my shoulder. There were no strange cars on the street. That didn’t mean anything.

            We walked up the steps, straight through the door that the biter had been leaning in that afternoon, through the hall, and out into the backyard. The trees were filled with golden lights and reflections, inundating the yard with sparkles and glow. A few tables filled with champagne and snacks sat underneath them.

Two small clusters of people stood waiting for us. The usual suspects, of course. One group consisted of people we’d actually invited. The other group consisted of Niels, his significant others, and a pair of henchmen. There were no guns out when we walked in, but a certain tension around the eyes of Boss and the way Thomas’ daughter was tucked behind him suggested that the situation had recently been different.

            “Congratulations,” Irene said, running up and kissing my new husband on the cheek. Her blonde hair curled gently around her face, which was smiling just fine except for the eyes. I didn’t think the worry in them had anything to do with us, though. Thomas followed her and shook my hand.

            “You’re a lucky man, 300,” he told me. “Except for the crime lord in your backyard, anyway.”

            “Thorns among the roses, Thomas,” I said cheerfully. “Thorns among the roses. I assume he’s come for another go at looking up my skirt.”

            The little group around Niels tensed. He smiled benignly, and turned to kiss the tall bald black man to his right long and lingeringly, one arm around him, and another around a curvaceous number named Natalie I’d pined for from afar for many a year. She was wearing a low-cut purple dress

            “Can we do toasts?” Britney asked. “I’d feel much more comfortable with the number of guns around here if we did some toasts.”

            She was 250’s daughter. I’d just married him. I had to assume her intent was innocent. It wasn’t easy, though I certainly understood the draw of the alcoholic beverage.

            “Great idea!” Irene said, gathering up flutes of champagne like tropical flowers to distribute. Natalie slipped out from under Niels’ arm and rolled across the grass to join her.

            “Please, let me help you,” she said, glaring at her husbands. The lady, I saw, did not approve.

            “Thank you,” Irene said graciously, and stepped back. She walked over to the criminal element and offered them flutes of champagne, trying to make the gap seem less obvious. Boss’ eyes, shaded under the brim of her hat, gleamed like a frozen lake after an ice storm.

            Natalie pressed two flutes of champagne into 250’s hands, tipping me a wink as she walked by. She didn’t like me. It didn’t matter. I didn’t watch her walk away.

            “Congratulations, dad,” Britney said, kissing him on the cheek. Then she turned to me. She didn’t look like she was going to bite this time, so when she held out her hand for me to shake, I did. “Congratulations, weirdo! I hope you guys are happy.”

            “Your felicitations are very welcome,” I said, releasing her hand. “Are you going to go back and live with your mother now?”

            “With pleasure,” she told me as my beloved husband stepped on my foot. “Can I make the first toast?”

            “It _was_ your idea,” 250 said, smiling at her. She beamed back at him, and bounced down the steps.

            “There are enough people here to forego the glass-clinking thing,” she said, “and also I think that a couple of you guys want to kill each other, so it’d be totally awesome if you guys would stay on your own sides of the grass because I do _not_ want to spend the evening in the hospital. Like, that would suck. So, yeah. Listen up. I wanted to say here’s to my dad and his new husband whose name isn’t actually George! I don’t like him and I probably never will, but he makes Dad happy, so what the hell.”

            We drank. My ego was not bruised at all.

            Irene lifted a glass and we all turned to look at her. Wendy darted off to the table to get some cake.

            “I knew this day was inevitable ever since I asked 250 about that sharply dressed man I’d seen him wandering around town with. He tried to put me off with some nonsense about a coworker, but eventually spilled that the man in a suit was a Scotsman with a hairy chest, and, well, we all know what that does to him. I’ve never heard him talk so much about a man. Eventually I met 300, and immediately recognized the good-natured, patient, accepting man my ex-husband had fallen in love with. So here’s to Agent 250 and his ‘sweet awkward dork in a suit!’ May they live long and happy lives together!”

            Thomas looked at us and grinned. He liked the optimism. Or the enthusiasm, one. Wendy came back and clung to his legs, cake plate in hand. People started to drift towards the tables like they had some kind of gravitational pull.

            Niels tapped his gun on the glass. It rang out over the grass. The people edging towards the food froze. He smiled and slipped the gun back in his jacket.

“These guys,” Niels said, swirling his glass in his hand to watch the fizz cling and fade from the side of the glass, all half-closed eyes and lazy smile. “What can I say about these guys? A better question is probably ‘where should I start?’ The first time I met Agent 250, he was tied up, bruised, and bleeding in a warehouse of mine. I brought him there to… _encourage_ him to back off. Imagine my surprise when I found out the old man was in love with my toy!”

            He paused and looked around for some admiration. The brief dip in his knee indicated that all he was getting was a pointed kick from the lovely Natalie. He turned his head and tried on a sad look. It netted him a glare. I winced. It was the sort of glare that said, ‘I know what you are and what you do, but so help me, if you don’t stop now, you will be sleeping on the couch for much longer than you consider reasonable,’ and it had about as much effect on him as a gun in the face. Which is to say, none.

            “So I brought in Agent 300, intending to have him choose between us. He had some trouble understanding the situation, but unfortunately, my helpful clarification – shooting Agent 250 – did not have the desired effect. He shot me! He actually shot me! After all our years together, no less. See?” He reached up and pulled at his face for a moment, popping his glass eye out with a grimace. Britney made a disgusted face. He smiled and put it back in. “That was when I knew they were meant to be together. It was the end of an era – the end of flirtations in seedy alleys and on rooftops, the end of the clothing theft, the casual bondage, the witty banter. The end of sensually stripping the fabric from his unconscious form, the end of toying with his subconscious desires…”

            He probably had some more to say, although the only avenues for continuation that I could see involved some things he hadn’t seen, as far as I knew, and some games we definitely hadn’t played. The sudden arrival of 250’s fist in his good eye cut off the rest, however, and it didn’t look like anyone was curious enough to pull them apart.

            I shot a glance at the henchmen, who were standing to the side, looking down at Niels and Agent 250 sort of thoughtfully. They shrugged.

            “He was kinda askin’ for it,” the shorter one, Drew, said. I tipped my head to them, and we stood there quietly for a minute. We were old acquaintances, which, despite the prominence of pointed guns in our relationship, lent the whole affair a comfortable air.

“You want we should separate them before the suit’s ruined?” the taller one inquired. He’d been with Niels longer and was the smarter of the two.

            I had plans for that suit, I remembered. I looked back at the combatants. 250 seemed to be winning. It looked like Niels would be smarting for a while. I was tempted to let them keep at it for a bit longer. But it _was_ a nice suit.

            “Please,” I said. They pulled them apart. The taller one held onto Niels, murmuring in his ear reproachfully. The shorter one delivered 250 to me. I wrapped my arm around his waist, surreptitiously brushing at the fabric. “Thanks.”

            “No problem,” the taller one said. “Congratulations. Make my life easier – have a long honeymoon, okay?”

            I nodded, and he nodded, and the henchmen each took a side of sulking crime lord and wandered out of the yard. I didn’t see where they went. I didn’t much care.

            “I… think we’ll be going now,” Natalie said to Irene, swaying up to her and taking her by the hand. Her other hand had her husband by the collar. He looked pretty contented there. I figured her boys took turns being smart, and today was not the day for Niels to demonstrate his familiarity with the part of his brain that was not stupid. “It was a pleasure to meet you. I’m so sorry for the fuss.”

            “Congratulations,” she added as she passed us. “Hope it works out for you!”

            Boss followed close behind them.

            “Congratulations, 250, 300. I expect to see you at work two weeks from now,” she said, and passed me a tall manila envelope. It was light, unmarked. A faint reek of fixative oozed up from it. “From your sister. She said she’s sorry she couldn’t make it.”

            I let her walk out the door without the aid of my eyes, too busy not opening the envelope in my hands. I hadn’t expected my sister to come to the wedding, or even to remember it, although I’d sent her an invitation along with the rest. It was more than I deserved that she had. I opened the envelope. There was a sheet of cardstock inside with a charcoal sketch of two men dancing. Scrawled underneath the sketch, ‘Congratulations on finding a new partner, with all my love.’

            250 looked over my shoulder.

            “Your sister paint that?” he said.

            “Yeah.”

            “It’s good.”

            “She’s got a gallery,” I told him. “Maybe we should go see it sometime.”

            “Sounds good.”

            Irene came up like a tornado, Britney caught up in the twist, and they blew through us in a gale of hugs before vanishing through the door. Thomas followed in their wake, trailing a daughter like a dust cloud.

            “I’ll try to keep him out of your hair for a couple of weeks,” Thomas said, tugging Wendy along. Most of the cake was spread across her front. “And by that I mean that when he’s finished sulking, I’m probably going to find him going through the makeup again.”

            “Sides of you we never knew!” I said.

            “Oddly enough, that’s just about what he said. Congratulations, again, on the marriage!” He shook our hands and left. Sometime during the confusion, our colleagues had melted away in proper secret agent form.

            There was no one in the backyard, now, apart from the two of us. The golden glow from the lights in the trees gave the place the look of a sepia photograph. The tables were still full of food. Champagne glasses were spread across the yard like silver paper. We just stood there, settling in. 

**Author's Note:**

> Infinite, infinite thanks to my fabulous beta, mirrormasque. This story would have foundered in the cataclysmic chaos of pre-Christmas preparations and deep doubts about the wisdom of writing this story in this style without her.
> 
> Note on the style: I chose to write this story in classic noir style as a character - description, I suppose. Agent 300, I think, imagines and fantasizes constantly. He is James Bond, he is a courtier, he is a pirate king, he is an explorer - he narrates his life in the character he assumes. The pretending doesn't distract, detract from, or hide his essential nature, though. At the heart of things, he's an exuberantly vibrant, irrepressibly bubbly man. Which made it really, really hard to write in noir style. Agent 300 is emphatically not Philip Marlowe. There's nothing dark, gritty, hopeless, or exhausted about him. I think, in the end, that the contrast works pretty well, and it was worth the ridiculous difficulty of the stylistic choice.


End file.
